1. The development of the vision of a company is complex, but easy. I imagined the same for the crafting a strategy. Once you have a vision of what you want to accomplish, and where you want to go, you can start to develop the plan to get there. This is the strategy to achieve your goal. You need to answer all the how questions. How will you satisfy the customers, how will you remain at the forefront of innovation, how will you be able to be aware of the coming changes (Ahenkora & Peasah, 2011). There are four levels of developing a strategy, corporate strategy, business strategy, functional strategy and operational strategy. A corporate strategy is the overall business plan for the entire corporation, no matter how large or how many interests the company has. The business strategy is how to deal with one particular industry or interest. The functional strategy is dealing with one portion of the organization and finally the operational strategy is how you are going to go about business on a daily basis. What is a specific approach – broad – that organizational leaders and managers can take to achieve alignment between vision and operations (day-to-day performance)? 2. According to Kohrman II (2008) the first step to understanding how to set objectives for change in an organization is to understand the future of the company. According to Liedtka (1998) the ability to use strategic thinking to create informational objectives and goals within the organization is needed. This is because strategic thinking is based on using innovated ideas in order to drive an organization forward. In addition it can be shown in Thompson, Peteraf, Gamble & Strickland (2015) that there are two main focuses that strategic thinking can be applies to; financial objective and strategic objectives. This is based on understanding the financial and marketing strategies while using strategic objectives to create near term and long term objectives based on delivering a high quality of performance form employees. In order to achieve these goals requires the organization to know how to implement management techniques best suited for the organization. Discuss the best way forward to achieve this management techniques. 3. Papa John Telling the Papa John Story (w/CC): https://www.youtube.com/user/papajohns (click) Go to the textbook (Thompson, Peteraf, Gamble & Strickland, 2015), Part 2, Case 4, and read the case regarding Papa John’s International, Inc.: Its Strategy in the Pizza Restaurant Industry (C-40 – C-49). From the case, answer the following question, being as specific as possible: How does Papa John’s distinguish themselves among the other three large rival pizza chains and also from other small pizza chains and competitors? 4. Papa John’s has remained true to what they were founded upon and has found themselves in the top four pizza chains. Because of this, I would say they are doing pretty well at executing their strategic plan. They have maintained high quality and have adapted with the times. They have added technological advances into their company, they have made changes to their menus in order to appeal to new customers, yet they have kept their menus simple and have not over-invested in new products. They continue to set high goals for the organization and because of this, they continue to grow and will probably remain in the top four for years to come. What in your view are some of the pros and cons of the Papa John’s strategic plan? being as specific as possible: 5. The main cause for the micro and macro problems is due to the lack of innovation. Leadership has failed to adapt to changing technologies, which should improve techniques and procedures within the company. Instead, they have stuck with what was working in the past and that stagnation of ideas and creativity has put the company behind the power curve compared to their competitors. As a company what are the remedies to these alarming problems? 6. The company systems being affected is the management structure, lax in change and profit. Everything else false up under these areas but a focus should be placed on management to take a better approach on making change that would benefit the company. Change is one of an elusive concept and it is inevitable and paradoxically but it depends on the will and those actions of everyone involved. Although we try to embrace change it is natural to resist it. We structure social movement, campaigns and business strategies around the need for change yet we don’t understand how it works. What kind of systems change would work for the Grayson Chemical Company? 7. Analysis of the Grayson Chemical Company case study indicated many areas the new CEO must place specific focus before the organization can reverse its negative trends, which include data gathering action as well as the use of diagnostic models to identify barriers to success. First, it is recommend that Mr. Baker take into consideration all of the inputs from the board members however; he should also employ data gathering techniques, such as interviews, with managers of the organization to determine current behavioral intentions such as motives, values, and attitude towards change. This data gathering will ultimately inform the CEO if management changes are truly required or if he can reach the desired changes through an organizational culture shift, as the culture will permeate all levels of the organization and not just the management teams. Look beyond what is obvious and come up with what you think is really the CEOs main focus in order to reverse the negative trend. Please provide a reference for each question.